by Paul Yoder
Though she was speaking for a sultan, and perhaps oversold her relationship with him at that, she knew she needed to convince the others of her plan of action, knowing full well that if she didn’t convince Nomad, Fin, and Cavok that her plan was better, they’d be rushing back into that city to their deaths, none of them standing any chance against the dominating knight of death that she had faced and was helpless next to. Even without the arisen master’s anomalous and formidable command over the hexweave, she doubted that Cavok, in all his strength and determination, stood much of a chance against the arisen king’s raw power.
The three were silent, each brooding over the sensible plan that Reza laid out that ultimately pulled them away from immediately doing what all three yearned desperately to do—put Bede to rest and destroy those responsible for her passing.
Nomad was the first to speak, saying, “I promised to follow and aid where I could in this mission, and I now keep that promise to you, Reza. I will go with you on the path you think best for the group—but, if we are not back to Brigganden’s gates within three moons, I will come back for Bede, and I will avenge her—alone if I must. I cannot long forsake her to the cruelty of Lashik’s domination in death.”
Reza, noticing Fin and Cavok’s approving nod, saw that she had just been given a deadline to make her plan work.
“Agreed. Three nights and we’ll be back, returning to take care of Lashik, his master, and the city of dead, with or without Sultan Metus’ help.”
32
The Desolate Rift
The high steppe offered little for the eye to wonder about. They traveled east the whole morning, passing a lone mountain to their north, bringing a drop off into their view on the horizon.
The horses had gotten one break the whole day which the group had unmounted to allow the mounts to completely lap up a shallow basin of water that sat in the depression of some exposed bedrock.
The pack, even the riders, now rank of horse sweat, the horses having been coated in white, frothy lather from midmorning on.
An hour later, Reza called for a halt at the edge of a large ravine, stretching as far north and south as the eye could see, impeding them from continuing east.
Fin trotted up, the horse’s knee buckling dangerously close to the cliffs edge due to fatigue, forcing him to back away.
Fin, jumping down off of his horse, said, “Maybe another day’s worth of travel just to get around this canyon on horse, who knows, maybe more. The horses are spent. They haven’t had a good ride in years. I doubt they’ve even got a few more hours left in ‘em before they collapse. What do you say about crossing that ravine on foot and turning the horses loose?”
Reza was thinking quietly to herself as Jadu piped in, “That cliff is no less than three hundred feet sheer! For a praven, that’s more like six hundred feet! How on earth do you propose us descending that height without the solution ending in a splat?”
Wanting to see if Fin had an answer, Reza allowed him to answer before jumping in.
“Well, take a look,” Fin said, jumping up dangerously close to the cliff’s edge, hovering over the three hundred foot drop without even a second thought to the danger he was standing over.
“It’s only this side of the canyon that’ll give us trouble. The other side, and the canyons beyond, look quite graded. Slopes will slow us down, but won’t be tricky like this cliff face.”
“How does that answer Jadu’s concern?” Reza scoffed.
Fin looked back and then pointed to a broken section of cliff face out of everyone’s sight but his.
“I was getting to it. Look there. A few hundred feet down is a section of cliff wall that seems manageable. Really manageable with rope, which we don’t have, but maybe doable with my supply line.”
Fin, stepping back to the group, pulled something out of the leather bag that hung along his back, producing a long cord of thin, braided cable.
“It’s only seventy-five feet, but it’s probably enough to get us through the difficult parts.”
Reza, gave him a hard look, internally considering their options. Dismounting, she crept over to the edge of the cliff, taking a closer look at the broken section of wall Fin was suggesting they descend at.
It looked rough, and though she knew Fin would have no problem downclimbing the treacherous heights, she had no idea how some of them would make the feat, Jadu and Zaren in particular, or her with her bruised ribs, or Nomad for that matter with his many injuries.
Backing away from the edge, she turned Fin’s proposal down.
“It’s too dangerous. How can you expect Zaren or Jadu to make that descent?”
“Ahem,” Zaren mumbled, clearing his throat to enter the conversation.
“We would be the least of your concerns. I’ve been talking with Jadu here about teaching him a bit of my craft and a levitation spell would be a great first trial for him! He could attempt to levitate him and myself down the cliff wall. I’m still much too weak to channel that amount of hexweave, but I’ve got one more page for that spell prepared and he could do it for a party of two. You all would still need to make your way down somehow, but we’d be fine.”
Somewhat taken aback by the twist in the conversation, Nomad asked, genuinely concerned for their safety, “What if Jadu can’t hold the spell and you two fall?”
“Ooohehehe!” Zaren laughed, causing even Cavok to look over in concern at the odd old man.
“Well then we’d fall to our deaths!”
All eyes turned to Jadu who only just shrugged his shoulders and said, “Best way to learn how to fly is to jump and try, right?”
Reza turned away to look at the vast expanse again, muttering, “This is crazy,” while Zaren continued to cackle, patting Jadu on the back, laughing longer than he should have at any joke, let alone a statement where no one but he found the humor in it.
Sighing heavily, frustrated at the hand they had been played, Reza turned and asked Nomad and Cavok, “What do you two think. Could you handle that climb? We’ll stick to the horses and head north if not. Viccarwood has got to be somewhere just beyond that line of canyons. If we travel through the night, we might reach it by morning. Once we make it past this cliff, we should be able to handle the rest of the terrain without too much trouble, I agree with Fin on that.”
“Yup,” was all Cavok had to say, not even taking the initiative to look at the cliff wall Reza was asking about. Nomad however took a peek over the edge before nodding his affirmation to that route.
Looking hard at the horses, Reza took off a pouch she had looped around the saddle before slapping the horse’s rump hard, sending it off into the desert prairie.
“Hope they can find some water. There’s plenty of edible grass for them out there,” she said while watching the horse gallop away.
She let out another sigh as she started over towards the cliff’s edge where they were to make their way down a sketchy, three hundred foot stretch of rock and narrow ledges with nothing but a seventy-five-foot cord between the four of them.
33
The Climb
The rest of the horses were unloaded and sent off. Reza and Nomad shed the remaining armor they wore, seeing that they’d need all the mobility they could get, along with a streamlined load, in order to make the climb.
Cavok took off some heavy plates of armor from his side and lower body too, but instead of placing them in a pile up top, he tossed them into the canyon to retrieve them after the descent, the plates falling for many seconds before clanking off rock and dirt at the bottom.
Looking over the edge where they were to begin their descent, Fin started talking his way through the planned path to the canyon floor so far below them.
“See that first ledge maybe a hundred feet below us?” he asked Reza, pointing to a narrow, sloped section of dirt that shot out from the side of the cliff wall.
“We’ll use my cord for this first section. I’ll go last to recover the cord and
down climb this without the assistance of the line. After that, I don’t know if you can see it from here, but I saw a chimney from the other vantage point over there. We’ll shimmy down that as far as we can and then use the cord again to rappel down the seventy-five feet that cord will give us, and then climb down to the second shelf, which again, you can’t see from where we’re at, but it’s down there, believe me. After that, it’s pretty simple bouldering down a steep, but not vertical, hundred feet or so.”
Reza, looking very much as though she wish she had not sent the horses off so early, got up without responding to Fin’s plan and walked over to Jadu and Zaren who were sat down pouring over a book together.
“Odd time to read,” she said, getting Jadu’s attention, his smiling face looking up immediately as soon as he realized someone was talking to him.
“Oh not at all! This is Zaren’s spellbook. He said it’s been with him for longer than any of us, together, have been alive—can you believe that? He’s going over the fine details of the lesser levitation spell he wants me to perform. Very complex matter it is, much closer to a science than anything. Which is good, since I’d hardly be able to master it if it were an art,” adding in randomly, “Apparently casting an enchantment without a focus to draw the energy from will drain some of one’s own life essence! Isn’t that amazing!”
Reza looked worriedly to Zaren, knowing how seriously wrong spells could go in the hands of even learned apprentices, let alone first-time enchanters.
“You have a focus for him to use in casting this spell, don’t you?”
Zaren looked up, smiling, but still seeming quite tired, as if not fully recovered from the rough time they all had over the last few days. “Yes, yes. I have something that’ll do for this spell. The page the spell is inscribed upon alone will cover most of the spell’s required hexweave resources. We’ll be fine.”
Jadu began asking a string of questions Reza didn’t understand, the two conversing once again, ignoring the rest of the group.
“Good luck,” she offered to the involved pair as she went back over to the rest of the group.
“Done. The anchor is set,” Fin proclaimed, finishing off hooking the cable around a large shrub a few feet back from the edge of the cliff.
“That’s going to hold Cavok?” Reza asked, worried at the prospect of their lives literally hanging from a bush on a cliffside.
“Yeah, that stuff’s copper oak. Roots are supposed to go down pretty deep and wide.”
“Ready, Nomad?” Fin asked, handing him the cord, Nomad nodding, slinking over to the edge and dropping over before Reza could object to demand she be the first one over.
“Guy’s not afraid of anything,” Fin said with a grin, watching the foreign man gingerly maneuver down the cord in a strange method, facing down while walking downwards, gripping securely the cord by his hip.
Nomad was at the end of the cord within only a minute or two, halting at the end of the cord to inspect the best method on getting the rest of the way down the twenty-five to thirty feet of wall.
The wall wasn’t featureless. There did seem to be quite a few nooks and crags to cling to, but the only line that he could see that would get him all the way to the ledge below him was a small, vertical crack in the wall to his left below him. If he could get to it, the broken line of rockface would more than likely be able to offer him enough handholds to work with.
Swinging over gently on the cord, Nomad had to painfully stretch, reopening freshly healing wounds, to plant two feet along a ridge just about where the crack started. Coming to the end of the cord, his hands becoming slightly moist, forced him to work fast on the task at hand, not knowing how long he could continue to hold the thin cord at it’s very end with a moist grip.
Slapping to the wall, releasing the cord, he immediately began to work his way down to get his hands where his feet initially landed, giving him a great hold on the wall.
The screech of a hawk overhead and a gentle breeze were the only sounds to accompany his descent, the rest of the group watching silently at the man dangled from the rockface far below them.
Reaching down, he latched on to the lip of the crack, leaning on it tentatively at first, then placing all of his weight on his fingers as he clung to the side of it.
Splitting his legs slightly outward, bracing himself and walking down as he hung off to the left of the crack, hanging from his frame, Nomad began working his way down the crack.
It took Nomad twice the amount of time to climb down along the rock wall than it had taken him with the cord, but as he touched down along the large, sloped ledge, the group up top cheered, excluding Reza, who wiped a few beads of sweat off of her brow, exhaling and looking away for a moment.
“How was she?” Fin yelled, referring to the climb.
Nomad clapped his hands together in victory, taking note of his audience. The bandages across his chest and stomach were noticeably bleeding through in spots, but as he looked up, he smiled and called out, “Not too bad! Hands got a little sweaty towards the end of the cord, and you will want to watch out for that. There is not much to grip with that line. There is a crack that runs all the way to the ledge and that worked well for me.”
“Can’t wait to try it!” Fin yelled back down, looking over to Reza, asking, “You next, milady?”
Looking to Fin with a blank expression, she looked down the wall, spat out a swear, and snatched the cord from Fin’s offering hand, slowly making her way over the edge of the cliff.
Reza clung to the cord, holding it close to her chest, walking her way down the cliff, slipping once or twice a few jerky inches before catching herself, putting the onlookers on edge as she made her way to the end of the cord.
Wrapping her hand around the cords end held her up short a few inches from making it to the ledge Nomad had pointed out.
Looking for another option to make her way to the ledge, she spotted a potential hold she could reach.
Knowing she had little time to dally on the end of the line, she swung herself over to the large hole in the wall, far to the left of the ledge, reaching out to throw a hand in the hole, supremely relieved as her four fingers latched on to a nice lip in the hole just as her grip on the cord unexpectedly slipped from her.
She wasn’t looking up at Cavok and Fin, but their worried expressions, especially that of Fin, who had his palm pressed firmly to his forehead, did not bespeak confidence in Reza’s climbing abilities.
Reaching over to the ledge Nomad had used, she leaned over and made her way to hang along it, getting a bit more comfortable with the flow and rhythm of the climb, seeing that there was a clear path down to where Nomad stood looking up at her.
“You are doing great, Reza!” Nomad offered, hoping to help encourage her along down the crack.
Wedging her fingers in along the black depth of the crack, she started to attempt to position herself just as she saw Nomad had done. Her technique looked shabby compared to his, but it proved an effective method for traversing that stretch of wall and was working for her.
She slowly working her way down along the crack into Nomad’s helping arms, Nomad making sure that she landed on the sloped ground without issue.
“Nice job, we’re proud of you!” Reza could hear from above.
Putting on a half-crooked smile, Reza checked her placement on the sloped cliffside, looking back up with a once-again serious face, waiting for the group’s attention to be off of her and for Cavok to start his descent.
Reza and Nomad waited a good minute or two, both starting to wonder what the holdup was when Fin, not Cavok, came over the edge of the cliff. Wearing Reza’s discarded gauntlet, steel cord wrapped around it, Fin easily managed just the right amount of slack and speed to lower him quickly to the end of the cord.
Without coming to a complete stop, Fin hopped onto the ledge that rested just above the vertical crack that led down to Nomad and Reza.
Crossing his weight with
every downward movement, Fin walked his way down to land between Reza and Nomad, tossing Reza her gauntlet, saying, “Rappelling down that tiny cord might work out to be a lot more manageable if you use this. I’ll show you how to work it while we wait for Cavok.”
Though Reza didn’t seem too concerned about Cavok being the one to free climb down the hundred foot of rock face without the aid of the seventy-five foot cord instead of Fin, Nomad looked up, an uneasy expression clearly visible as the large man crested the edge of the cliff, starting his way down the cliff wall, meticulously at first.
“Don’t worry about that one. I probably should have suggested to have him do the bulk of the heavy lifting on this climb from the start. He’s a much better climber than I, though he may not look it,” Fin said to Nomad, seeing the worry on the man’s face at a glance.
Cavok was picking up speed now, becoming more limber as he stretched out his massive muscles, his legs bulging with every step down, arms supporting him during key transitions of his hefty weight.
“He used to climb nonstop with his brother growing up. Though they’ve been separated for years now, he still wanders off as he’s been with us to go climb mountains we rest near. I say he’s crazy, but he is very good at it. Has to be, or he’d be long dead. Can’t take many long falls and get away with it, right?” Fin added, softly talking sideways to Nomad as all three looked up at the spectacle that was Cavok, his back a constant motion of corded tissue as he worked his way down the cliff at his own, leisurely pace.
